Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker English Demo Releases Today

No matter how often you play it, you won’t be able to understand the Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker TGS demo unless you know Japanese. Thankfully, all that changes today with a brand new English language demo for your PSP. Based on our calculations, the English translation makes it about 15% more comprehensible than before. Excellent!

The demo will be available on the PlayStation Store and here on Joystiq (via BigDownload) later today. To ensure a problem-free experience, make sure you have the latest firmware update and have at least 103MB of free space on your PSP.

Gallery: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

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Team Fortress 2 To Add Crafting System Soon?

How often have you wanted your fast-paced online shooters to include some aspect from MMOs, such as epic mounts, complicated hotbars for all your skills, or monthly subscription fees? Well, none of those things are coming to Team Fortress 2…yet. Instead, it seems like Valve is testing the waters by adding crafting to the game. Yes, crafting.

In case you think I’m making this up, let me assure you I’m not that imaginative. Here, I’ll let Valve explain it.

Introducing Team Fortress 2’s new Crafting system. Say goodbye to those enjoyable evenings spent complaining on the forums about which item in your inventory was the most useless, spraying anti-Australian racist hate speech all over Robin Walker, his lovely wife, and his beautiful children. EVERYTHING in your inventory now contributes towards something you actually WANT, and can build YOURSELF! If you’re super clever, you’ll even be able to craft new items before others can earn them the old fashioned way.

Bear hide gathering, forlorn LFG’s in the chat text, and gold farming can’t be far behind.

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Razer Leads The Way With Abyssus Gaming Mouse

Gamers tend to take their “vocation” seriously, as bragging rights are up for stake with winners feeling that nice, warm glow all over while losers look at their mouse and start cursing. That’s right – watch any average gamer duke it out with the rest of their mates at a LAN party and you’ll realize that the losing side tend to be more frustrated in terms of body language, sending forth a smattering of cuss words alongside banging the mouse on the table, touting that they missed that crucial shot due to being let down by inferior gaming hardware. Razer has been in the business long enough to know what they’re doing, and their latest release would be the Razer Abyssus gaming mouse that target those who are new to the world of gaming and want a feel of what professional gaming equipment is like before diving headlong later on with the gaming bug going at full steam ahead.

The Razer Abyssus gaming mouse will merge both simplicity with a state-of-the-art 3.5G 3500dpi infrared sensor to make sure you can make the shot just about any and every time as long as you have the ability to do so. Targeting gamers who demand reliability and functionality under the fiercest gameplay conditions, the Razer Abyssus will come equipped with a couple of large non-slip buttons that have been tuned for maximum tactile feedback, featuring Razer’s built-in Hyperesponse technology. Located underneath, Razer has placed a couple of easily accessible mechanical switches, where one of them is used for on-the-fly dpi switching for a choice of 450, 1800, or 3500dpi, while the other offers a polling rate switch that enables instant adjustment from a standard 125hz to 1000hz Ultrapolling.

Expect the Razer Abyssus to hit North America for $49.99, while our friends living across the Atlantic have it slightly cheaper (dollar-for-dollar) at €39.99. As for the other regions of the world, they’ll just have to wait until later next month – hopefully in time for the holiday season.

Press Release

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To Borderlands Director, A Sequel Please?

If you build it, they will come — mostly for the loot. That’s how Borderlands creative director Mike Neumann candidly describes the possibility of a sequel to his game. "Yes, I can probably confirm that there’s a chance of a Borderlands 2 ," he told VG247 with a chuckle. "I mean, with anything, especially a new IP, if people want more and you can make more, and everybody can make money and do good business there, it obviously makes really good sense to do that."

An unexpectedly large number of people thought it made really good sense to purchase the colorful, FPS-RPG hybrid. Neumann jokingly admits surprise at seeing stores running out of stock, even though "it certainly doesn’t suck to be the people who made the game you can’t keep in stock."

Though plans for a sequel have yet to manifest outside of the water cooler area — Gearbox is currently grinding through Borderlands DLC — Neumann believes the "praise and love" for the franchise will make that first decision easier. "So yeah, if everything makes sense, Borderlands 2 seems like a no-brainer to me."

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Fantasy Flight Games Announces ‘Runewars’ Big Box Game

Runewars is an epic board game of conquest, adventure, and fantasy empires for two to four players. Designed by Corey Konieczka, Runewars pits players against each other in a strategic game of battles and area control, where they must gather resources, raise armies, and lay siege to heavily fortified cities.

Runewars takes place in the same popular fantasy universe as the best-selling board games Runebound and Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and dozens of fan-favorite heroes and monsters play their part. The wars for the dragon runes are beginning, and only one faction will emerge victorious. What would you do to claim the ultimate power?

Runewars includes:

•A thorough 40-page instruction guide
•Nearly two hundred highly-detailed plastic miniatures
•Over two hundred tokens
•Over two hundred cards, both small and standard sized
•13 map tiles, each composed of multiple hexes and including stunning three-dimensional mountain terrain!

Fantasy Flight Games

The Serenity RPG Expands With ‘Big Damn Heroes Handbook’

Big damn heroes. That’s you and your crew. Don’t matter where you are in the ‘Verse or how you aim to pay for those Fruity Oaty bars. Could be you’re flyin’ a ship held together by spit and duct tape, haulin’ cargo that the Feds would consider a mite questionable. Could be you’re flyin’ a Piao Leong cruiser, doin’ righteous work for the Alliance. you and yours are Big Damn Heroes and, as such, you need a Big Damn Heroes Handbook.

Which, as it happens, is what you’re holdin’. In this book, a partner to the Serenity Role Playing Game, you’ll find new Traits such as Ain’t Got Time to Bleed and Glory Hound. There’s expanded and clarified rules for character and ship combat. More information on Chinese culture in the ‘Verse, including the Tongs and new Chao Ji Chinese phrases and proper names. And you say you want to a little business with your old buddy, Badger? You’ll find his description and game stats, along with a host of other NPCs—some friendly, some not so much.

No Power in the ‘Verse Can Stop You

The original Serenity Role Playing Game has sold more than 25,000 copies in print and has continued to draw in more fans to gaming with the Cortex System rules for over three years. The fans are eager for more options they can bring to the game table. Now we have the answer for them. Read more

‘Elite’ Brought Open-Worlds To Videogames Before Their Time

Whoa, a sudden burst of activity on the website for a 25-year-old game? The official site for Elite is in the middle of a series of new posts, artwork, and even an upcoming interview with one of the game’s creators.

If you’re not acquainted with Elite, you might be surprised to learn that open-world games are 25 years old. As co-creator David Braben explains in an introductory video:

In Elite, you play the role of a space pilot where you’re given a slightly rubbish space ship and a 100 credits and you get to fly around the galaxy — in fact, several galaxies — doing exactly what you like. The idea is, by the way you play the game — you can either play the game as a pirate, you can play the game as a trader, you can play the game as a bounty hunter — there are all different roles. But you don’t actually select a role. It’s not like a role-playing game. You can do any and all of these things as the whim takes you.

He furthermore says the game was a tough sell back in 1984 because “you didn’t have three lives and it took longer than ten minutes to play through”.

Among young whipsnappers who don’t know Elite, Braben’s studio, Frontier, is better known for the third RollerCoaster Tycoon. They also created the sublime Lost Winds, available as Wii Ware, and they’re currently at work on the follow-up, Lost Winds: Winter of the Melodias.

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Dawn of War 2 Update 1.5.0 - ‘There Is Only War’ Released

Another one of Relic Entertainment’s ambitious post-release balancing acts goes live today. The "There Is Only War" update for Dawn of War 2, known more prosaically as version 1.5.0, introduces a whole mess of balance changes and even a few new abilities to the units in the game. The list is here.

"There Is Only War" also adds eight new maps that are actually five new maps. One was part of a pre-order exclusive deal and another is actually re-used three times in different configurations based on the number of players in the game (Gamereplays.org has a great analysis of the new maps here). I’ve goofed on Relic for a while that all their maps seem to be set on either Dagobah or Tattoine, but I’m happy to see that at least one of the new maps, Leviathan Hive (pictured), seems to have its own aesthetic. Furthermore, a map editor will be included with the patch, so there should be no shortage of places to fight as players create their own maps.

A completely revised replay feature will make it easier to figure out what’s going when you watch recorded games. For instance, it used to be a mystery what units a player was building and what wargear his commander equipped. "There Is Only War" changes that.

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Trick Your Xbox 360 With Windows And Lights

Tons of people own an Xbox 360. But almost all of them have a boring, stock model. You know, one without a window in the top and sweet LED lights inside that let you see the components as they play. You, however, can be different.

The XCM Black Light Chameleon case lets you make your Xbox 360 the most unique console on the block. You can choose from one of 7 colors for the lights or just have them cycle through them all. It’s a DIY affair, but the kit comes with everything you need to perform the surgery yourself in about 10 to 15 minutes. Seems worth the effort to me.

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‘Champions Online’ Open Beta Starts August 18

Sure, it’s an exciting headline if you’ve been jonesing to join legions of other adults as they pretend to have super powers, but it does come attached to a couple of caveats. For one, the Champions Online beta will only be running until August 26, scarcely enough time to get our tights broken in.

Also, you won’t be able to get entrance to the beta unless you pre-order the game through IGN’s Direct2Drive service beginning on August 5. Maybe that’s not a problem for you, but if that’s a deal breaker (ladies), you’ll be sitting on your latex-gloved thumbs until the game launches for real on September 1.

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